12 October 2010

Eating crow: tuition fees

It took reading Jonathan Freedland's ludicrously nostalgic exegesis in the Guardian to snap me out of MSM-style tunnel vision about the changes to university funding of which the Browne report is only a part. It also involves killing off all the useless degree courses and the pseudo-academics who are the only people who benefit from them.

Browne has radically extended the business logic, opening the door to a world where a place at Oxford or Cambridge costs more than one at Keele, and a course in science sets you back more than one in theology. Some forecast that elite institutions will soon demand £12,000 or even £20,000 a year. Even if the government sets the limit at £7,000, it still represents a shift in our very notion of public services.

No shit! It seems Freedland still doesn't get it - and to my shame, I momentarily forgot - that the whole thrust of the Coalition government is to change British perceptions of what public services are for.

It took several years for New Labour to break the public trust; the coalition has done it in just a matter of months. The spending axe may barely have fallen, but trust in politics is already in shreds.

What planet does this guy inhabit? Trust in politics was in shreds long before this lot got into power. Do the words "Expenses scandal" ring any bells?